but are there other more successful arguments out there that reveal more about God’s intentions? I mean, all the arguments I know only give me good reason to believe in God, not to believe that he is all loving or merciful. How do I know he isn’t pure evil?

THE AXIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT is an argument from the existence of objective moral values. It is my favorite argument for the existence of God, probably because it was the first one I was ever exposed to. The first time I ever began to seriously consider the possibility of proving God’s existence was when Sarah loaned me a book called The Language of God . The author, Francis Collins, hinted that the existence of an innate Moral Law within every human being was indicative of God. Needless to say, I saw the significance. The Law of Nature, is such an odd thing, really. It quite simply shouldn’t exist. Upon inspection, it is indeed as objective and transcendent as any law of science. But how odd then, that though the Laws of Science describe how things are, the Law of Nature prescribes how things ought to be.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

1.) If there is no God, then objective Moral Facts do not exist

2.) Objective Moral Facts exist

3.) Therefore, God exists

We simply have to clarify what this argument means before moving on to argue it. By “God”, I mean an Ultimately Authoritative Commander of Moral Facts. By “Moral Facts”, I mean “oughts” and “ought nots” which are objectively binding. To say something is objective is to say it is independent of ones subjective preference, or universal, or absolute etc. The first premise of the argument is one which is commonly misunderstood. This does not mean that one must believe in God do be a good person, nor does it mean that atheists are intrinsically evil and theists are intrinsically good. To use the words that Sartre attributed to Dostoyevsky, the first premise reads: “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.” To use the words of Payton, the second premise then reads: “Funny thing is, not everything is permissible”. From this, it can be argued that God exists.

Descriptive facts are facts about the way that the world is. It is a fact that cats eat mice because there are actual cats who actually eat actual mice. It is a fact that Paris is the capital of France because there exists a city called Paris that is the capital of an actual place called France. For descriptive facts, there are objects in the actual world that make them true. Another way of saying this is that descriptive facts are grounded in reality by the nature of the objects they describe.

MORALITY CONSISTS OF A SET OF PRESCRIPTIVE FACTS

Moral facts are different from facts about geography or science. The fact that we ought to do something about the existence of evil is not a fact about the way that the world is, it’s a fact about the way that the world ought to be. There is nothing out there in the physical world that makes moral facts true. This is because moral facts aren’t descriptive, they’re prescriptive; moral facts have the form of commands. Unlike descriptive facts, which are grounded in reality by theobjects they describe, prescriptive facts are grounded in thesubject which prescribes them.

PRESCRIPTIVE MORAL FACTS IMPLY A MORAL PRESCRIPTOR

There are some things that necessarily exist in pairs. There can’t be something that is being carried unless there is something else that is carrying it. There can’t be something that is hated unless there are lots of people that hate it. Commands are like this; commands can’t exist without something else existing that commanded them. Morality consists of a set of commands, and therefore requires a commander.

What remains to be seen however, is what this commander is like. At this point, it is not exactly clear why the commander of morality has to be like God at all. It could be society, or evolution perhaps.

OBJECTIVE MORALITY IS ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY

Morality is absolute and objective. If someone ought to do something, then no matter what they think or prefer, they still ought to do it. It might be in my best interests not to give any money to charity, and though I’ll be considerably poorer afterwards, I am morally obligated to do so, so I ought to. It might be in my best interests to pretend that I’m too busy go to the Sea Scout meeting on Monday so that I can loaf around and watch House M.D., but I’m morally obligated to go, so all things considered, I ought to go.

If everyone began to think the sky was fuschia, would that make it so? If tomorrow, Al Qaeda took over the world and killed everyone who believed the Holocaust ocurred, would that make it true that there was no Holocaust? What if they killed everyone who thought the Holocaust was wrong? Would Hitler still be guilty? Of course! Just as guilty as he is now! Very many people do not believe in the Holocaust, in fact, the world is genuinely divided on the issue. Does this make the Holocaust any less real? Any less objective? Nope. People may be mistaken. A difference of opinion does not harm objectivism.

Absolute moral obligation is the only factor by which to determine what one absolutely ought to do, though by definition what you ought to do is synonymous with what you’re morally obligated to do. However, there is a degree of precedence within morality. Of course, there is the Absolute Moral Obligation that I’ve been talking about, but there are other common moral systems that many would be familiar with. The law, one example, has tremendous roots in absolute moral obligation, but is distinct from it in many places. Political systems are, in essence, grounded in morality for their application. Social Conventions like etiquette, chivalry, and fashion are miniature moral systems. A very interesting thing to note about these examples is that they are relative systems. The law is relative to its proper state, and social conventions are relative to their societies. This is not the case with absolute moral obligation, which is objective.

If someone has one reason to do one thing, but ought to do another thing, then all things considered they ought to do the other thing. Prescriptive moral facts are the only factors that impact whether or not one ought to do something. Morality has unique authority.

Commands, though, are only as authoritative as the person that commands them. If I were to command everyone to pay extra tax so that we could bail out the economy, then no one would have to do so. I’m not the President. But if the President were to command everyone to pay extra tax so that we could bail out the economy, then that would be different, because he does have that authority.

As morality has more authority than any human person or institution, the moral argument suggests that morality cannot have been commanded by any human person or institution. As morality is absolutely authoritative, as morality overrules everything, morality must have been commanded by a prescriptor who has authority over everything. The existence of objective moral facts thus points to the existence of an absolutely authoritative Prescriptor of said facts, who can properly be called God.

CONCLUSION

1.) If there is no God, then objective Moral Facts do not exist

Prescriptive facts imply a prescriptor

2.) Objective Moral Facts exist

The aforementioned sort of prescriptive facts exist in reality, and have certain characteristics

3.) Therefore, God exists

The characteristics exhibited by said prescriptive facts are necessarily shared by their prescriptor, rendering it so suspiciously similar to God as to validate the propostion that something like God exists.